Ending both political plagues will take at least four years

By Chris Powell

Full of enthusiasm for the prospect, a Torrington resident writes to the Waterbury Republican-American that the forthcoming presidential election “is a chance to end the plague of Donald Trump.” Indeed, since Trump, the Republican presidential nominee for a third time, is 78, if he loses next month he almost surely won’t run again.

But for many people who deplore Trump’s character and demeanor, the problem with getting rid of his “plague” on Nov. 5 is that it will produce four more years of the current plague, the Democratic administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. 

What are voters to do if they deplore not only Trump personally but also the policies of the current administration, policies the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris, probably will continue?

Ordinarily someone of Trump’s character and demeanor would have no chance of election. But his adversaries still don’t realize that his support is largely a reaction to them.  

There are many causes of this reaction. Among them are ruinous inflation; worsening poverty and crime; open borders and unfettered illegal immigration; the proxy war in Ukraine; the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan; government censorship; the promotion of transgenderism; lies told about the virus epidemic, President Biden’s mental competence, and economic and crime data; a Supreme Court nominee who purported not to know what a woman is; the official culture of victimhood; racial preferences; and so on — all of it supported, excused, or concealed by propagandistic news organizations.

Such complaints aren’t Republican contrivance. Polls show that most people think the country was better off when Trump was president and that even most Democrats think the country is going in the wrong direction. Republicans would win the election overwhelmingly if they had not nominated such a troublesome personality and the election was decided on policy instead. 

Even Harris seems to recognize the great desire to repudiate her administration, for her campaign slogan is “a new way forward,” her administration’s way having failed.

With his grotesque faults, recklessness, crudeness, and buffoonery, Trump embodies and gives voice to the contempt of government and politics felt by many and maybe most Americans. That is, Trump is a product not just of his foes but of democracy itself.

Yes, the country needs to get rid of Trump. But more urgently it also needs to repudiate the Biden-Harris administration. Unfortunately this will take at least four years, since it can be accomplished only by electing Trump and then letting the Constitution and age disqualify him from a third term.  

BEYOND THE FRINGE: Even as its capture by its nutty leftist fringe is threatening to take the Democratic Party down nationally, Connecticut’s own nutty leftist fringe is trying to push the party over the edge.

That fringe is the Working Families Party, created to blackmail Democrats out of appealing to the political center. The party provides a second line on the ballot to Democrats pursuing a leftist agenda, and it threatens to run its own candidates against Democrats who aren’t leftist enough, thereby taking votes from them and giving Republicans a better chance to win.

The WFP’s questionnaire for state legislative candidates seeking the party’s endorsement is a treat. It asks candidates to identify their socio-economic class (“poor, working class, middle class, upper-middle class, upper class”); gender (“agender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, man, non-binary, woman, questioning, two-spirit, other”); and race (“Asian-American, Pacific islander, Black, African-American, African descent, Latino/Latina/Latine/Hispanic/Mestizo, Middle Eastern, Native American/Alaskan native/indigenous person”).

At least the questionnaire doesn’t ask candidates to disclose their religion, favorite sports team, and biggest regret in life.

The rest of the questionnaire seeks assurances that a candidate will raise taxes and spending, give unemployment benefits to strikers, preserve government employee union control over public finance, prevent competition with public schools, extend government medical insurance to illegal immigrants, continue to forbid police from cooperating with immigration authorities, weaken the private sector, and promise not to join the Moderate Caucus.

Any Democrat in Connecticut who gets on the Working Families Party’s line may be assumed to have enlisted for most of this. 

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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